Twitter vital to SharePoint success: Evangelists

Social networking site creating a new sense of community

Twitter has been integral to the popularity and adoption of SharePoint, according to evangelists of Microsoft's collaboration, file-sharing and Web publishing suite.

Speaking at the Australia SharePoint Conference in Sydney today, Joel Oleson and Mark Miller said online spaces such as Twitter were dramatically shaping the future of SharePoint.

“I think one of the biggest things that has changed the SharePoint community and influenced it over time is Twitter,” Oleson said. “It seems weird that another technology [could have such an influence]... Twitter is something itself that has made the world flat and a lot, lot smaller.”

In a dramatic example Oleson said social media even dictated the terms in which the SharePoint community interacted in person.

“I remember at the SharePoint conference in the US, people would wear their Twitter Ids on their shirts,” he said. “You would know them from their ID before you’d know them from their face.”

Agreeing, colleague Miller said the best way to communicate with SharePoint evangalists was through Twitter.

“Twitter is one of the main communication mediums for the community,” he said. “All of us evangelists are on Twitter. The value of Twitter is having direct contact with the people that you trust.”

Miller said a new sense of community has been created through the use of Twitter.

“To me, community means who do I trust that I want to know from whenever they find something that’s going to be of value for me?,” he said.

The insights come as IBM last month said while more Australian companies are opting to use social networking, it is proving not to be the death knell of unified communications.

Follow Lisa Banks on Twitter: @CapricaStar

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

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